Consumers More Confident In February Than Initially Thought, UMichigan Finds

Who cares about tumbling GDP: it is all about the confidence of Wall Street CEOs, pardon, consumers whose confidence that the winter weather would finally end , if not so much in the economy with over 91 million people out of the labor force, resulted in yet another beat in the data, sending the Final UMichigan print higher from 81.2 to 81.6 on expectations of an unchanged print. The internals were largely irrelvant, but in terms of current conditions, consumers were most confident since November, up from 94.0 to 95.4, while expectations about the future was at 72.8 the highest since August. Finally, 1 year inflation expectations dropped modestly from 3.3% to 3.2%: don't worry though - in the New Normal declining inflationary expectations is enough to send the S&P 500 to new all tinme highs.